Nona Susan Fuhrmann
courtesy photo
Nona Fuhrmann
RONAN — Nona Susan Fuhrmann went home to celebrate Easter in Heaven on April 5, 2015. She was born on Jan. 10, 1926, in Beach, North Dakota, the only daughter of Harry Homer and Effie Lela Miller.
After her father’s unexpected death, Nona and her family moved to Ronan, where she attended grade school and graduated from Ronan High School. In 1944, she was inducted into the United States Cadet Nurse Corps. She went on to graduate from St. Patrick School of Nursing in Missoula and worked there as a registered nurse. In 1949 she married Earl Phillips, with whom she had five children. Upon returning to Ronan with her children, she worked at St. Luke Community Hospital. The nursing specialties she most enjoyed were surgery and baby delivery. Many of the Mission Valley’s residents owe their safe arrival to her care.
In 1963 she married James Fuhrmann and they had one daughter. After an injury and illness, she moved to Portland where she remained until her passing.
Nona’s children Patsy, Deborah (Tom), Michael, Barbara, Garnet (John), her brothers Harry and Paul, and seven grandchildren survive her.
Her parents, brothers Ray “Pat” Miller and Albert Miller and her daughter Julie, predecease her.
Nona enjoyed making beautiful things. Her children and grandchildren will treasure the quilts, pillows and crochet presents she made for years to come. She enjoyed road trips with her kids and grandkids, (even when she rode in the back where baggage gets no vote.) Volunteer work and friends filled her life after retirement but most of all she gleefully enjoyed beating us all at Hand and Foot.
A Life Celebration Service will be held on Sunday, on April 19, at 2 p.m. at the Ronan Seventh-Day Adventist Church with a reception immediately following at Glacier View Adventist School.
